


The Blame Game

by alessandralee



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-22
Updated: 2014-02-22
Packaged: 2018-01-13 10:40:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,021
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1223275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alessandralee/pseuds/alessandralee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jemma blames herself for Skye being shot, and Ward tries to make her see it's not her fault.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Blame Game

**Author's Note:**

> Set immediately after episode 1.13 (T.R.A.C.K.S.), so everything could be shot down in a few weeks. Written for Ward x Simmons Ship Week on tumblr and the prompt "games."

He finds her in the lounge, slouched into the couch cushions, a glass of May’s whiskey in her hand. It’s been a few hours since she handed off care of Skye to a group of SHIELD doctors. She’d disappeared immediately afterwards and, judging from her change of clothes and wet hair, there was a shower involved.

He pours himself his own glass of whiskey from the bottle she left out on the bar and takes a seat on the opposite end of the couch. She doesn’t acknowledge him at all, doesn’t even move. She just stares off into space.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he offers.

Silence. She doesn’t turn to look at him, she doesn’t fidget with the hem of her t-shirt, she doesn’t take a sip of the drink clutched in her hand.

“It’s not your fault, Simmons. You weren’t even there when she was shot. And from what Fitz told us, you put your own life on the line to save them.”

“It wasn’t even a real explosive,” she finally replies. Her voice in monotone, even but clearly distracted. It doesn’t do anything to make him worry less.

“So what?” he begins. “You were willing to take the brunt force of what you thought was a grenade so that they could get away. That was brave.”

“I let them get away and go after Quinn. If it wasn’t for me, Skye would have been lying unconscious on the floor of a train, not an operating table with severe blood loss and trauma.”

Her blank look has been replaced by an angry one. She’s glaring at the table in front of her as if her eyes alone could bore a hole through it. She’s squeezing the glass in her hand hard enough that he wouldn’t be surprised if it broke, or at least flung from her grip and landed across the room.

“Jemma, there is know way you could have known that. If you’re responsible for what happened, the so is everyone else on that team. Fitz let her go in alone. May, Coulson, and I left three agents on the train who were unprepared for combat. There are a million things we could have done differently, and maybe some of them could have given us a better outcome, but maybe things would have ended worse.”

It’s a conversation his own S.O. had with him the first time they lost someone on a mission and it’s something he’s had to remind himself of time and time again. Things can go terribly wrong and sometimes that’s just how it is. Sometimes no one on the team is responsible. You learn what you can from it and push forward. There’s no other option.

“I just… she almost died. She could still die. We could get a call from Coulson in two minutes telling us that I failed.”

As soon as those words are out, she breaks. The anger in her tense shoulders deflates. She hugs her knees to into her chest and buries her face in them. He can hear her own muffled gasps and she tries to keep from crying.

She’s still not getting it. She’s still blaming herself.

“If the worst happens,” he considers reaching out to comfort her, but she’s trying so hard to keep some of her composure, and he doesn’t want to throw her off balance, “then it isn’t your fault. It’s Ian Quinn’s fault. It’s the Clairvoyant’s fault. They are the one’s responsible for this, not you.”

She lifts her head up to look at him for the first time since they started this conversation.

“But I’m the doctor. We have the best technology on the planer and I could barely thing of a way to buy us time. Because I don’t have enough training. I wasn’t good enough to do anything. I keep thinking that if I just paid more attention to the medical doctors I’ve worked with, or if I just read more on bullet wounds, I might have been able to help her more.”

Gracelessly, she lists to the side and falls into he. He wraps his arms around her and pulls her in tightly as she sobs loudly into his chest.

Eventually, her crying calms a bit and it takes the opportunity to remind her of what he’s been trying to get across.

“Jemma, you are on this plane as a biochemist, and you’re a damn good one at that. You’re here to analyze and run tests and make compounds. So if you can stitch us up after a fight, then that’s a bonus. But no one expects you to do everything. You’re only human. You can’t fix everything.”

And with that, she collapses back against him as her crying picks up again.

It weighs on him though, the fact that she feels she needs to be able to do everything. She shouldn’t feel like she needs to do things she has no training for her. Perhaps they’ve all been demanding too much of her. He resolves that, going forward, she will know how much they appreciate what she does. He’ll make sure she knows that, when she’s going above and beyond, they’re all aware that she’s only trained to do so much. Everything else is extra. She needs her load lightened, and intends to help that to happen.

It takes a long time for her sobbing to face again, and as it does she falls asleep, limps against her body. Trying to move as little as possible so as not to disturb her, he reaches over the arm of the couch and feels around for the blanket he knows is folded there. He grabs it and awkwardly maneuvers it around both of their bodies. Then, cradling her small body against his, he lets himself doze off as well.

It feels like only moments have passed when he’s woken up by the buzzing of his phone. Careful not to wake Jemma, he fishes the phone out of his pocket. It’s been nearly two hours. Coulson’s name flashes across the screen.

“This is Ward.”

“She’s out of the woods.”


End file.
